Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wednesday May 17, 2006 @01:22PM
from the corporations-striving-to-be-big-brother dept.

Wired News is reporting that the equipment found in the "secret" NSA room at AT&T wasn't some elaborate device designed by Big Brother. Rather, it is a commercially available network-analysis product that any company could acquire. From the article: "'Anything that comes through (an IP network), we can record,' says Steve Bannerman, marketing vice president of Narus, a Mountain View, California, company. 'We can reconstruct all of their e-mails along with attachments, see what web pages they clicked on, we can reconstruct their VOIP calls.'"

From http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/faq.php#15 [eff.org]What is Daytona?Daytona is a database management technology originally developed and maintained by the AT&T Laboratories division of AT&T, and is used by AT&T to manage multiple databases. Daytona was designed to handle very large databases and is used to manage "Hawkeye," AT&T's call detail record (CDR) database. Daytona is also used to manage AT&T's huge network-security database, known as "Aurora." As of September 2005, all of the CDR data managed by Daytona, when uncompressed, totaled more than 312 terabytes.http://www.research.att.com/projects/daytona/ [att.com]

What is Hawkeye?Hawkeye is AT&T's call detail record (CDR) database, which contains records of nearly every telephone communication carried over its domestic network since approximately 2001, records that include the originating and terminating phone numbers and the time and length for each call.

What is Aurora?Aurora is a network-security database that had been used to store Internet traffic data since approximately 2003. The Aurora database contains huge amounts of data acquired by firewalls, routers, honeypots and other devices on AT&T's global IP (Internet Protocol) network and other networks connected to AT&T's network.

Shanghai Telecom, which has 6.2 million landlines, plans to use Narus Inc.'s system to improve its ability to block "unauthorized" Internet calls that connect to its phone system, bypassing its toll structure.

Great to know that the same Big Brother software is being used in USA and China. Invokes some warm fuzzy feeling of union...

Saudi Telecom, the preeminent telecommunications provider in the region, is employing the NarusInsight Discover Suite's VoIP detection application module to recover revenue that would otherwise be lost through unregulated VoIP traffic. Deployed by Narus Partner Giza Systems, NarusInsight captures and analyzes all VoIP traffic in the Saudi Telecom network. The VoIP detection module provides the real time information necessary for Saudi Telecom to block traffic destined for unregistered international VoIP gateways, thereby enforcing tariffed gateway regulations. NarusInsight is the leading choice for managing IP services in the Middle East largely because of its ability to successfully address critical business issues like VoIP detection in real-time.

I dont know what I fear more... the increasingly easy way any (evil) corporation can compile all my communications or the idea that the government can. I think its pretty clear that as technology gets more advanced, so do privacy concerns.

I think the most frightening part is that when I talk to my more conservative family members and most people who only casually know about these issues or politics, they see NOTHING wrong with everyone and their brother recording all the information they can on them and their family/friends. Their reasoning.. I have nothing to hide, why should I care? It is catching the "evil dooers".

Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.

You guys might want to check this out:
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/05/17/new-executive- order/ [thinkprogress.org]
Bush has signed an executive order that allows the Telcos to lie on their financial statements. It would be almost impossible to prove these programs existed without access to classified information. Another way to prove them, however, would be to detail how much money the telcos receive from the federal government. They are required to report this information to the SEC beecause they are publically traded companies.
Bush has signed an order that allows them to violate securities law. Worse off, he did this just a few days preceeding the USA Today article which implies that they had notice ahead of time that they were about to be exposed.
We are in for a world of hurt people. Say bye bye to the United States of America as we know it. This is fascism by definition.

I'm a little baffled by your comments about "political correctness" and Bill Clinton, however. According to the article you linked:

"This decision to deny a warrant gave rise to the myth that 'The Wall' between overseas intelligence and criminal investigations made the PATRIOT Act necessary. To this day this myth is cherished among right-wing radio talkers and has, just now, morphed into a clumsy justification for the White House's sidestepping the FISA court and directing its own wiretap frenzy via the NSA. This is all pure fantasy.

"Instead of clueless Carter-era restrictions on domestic spying or insufficient distrust of civil liberties, Samit cited
'obstructionism, criminal negligence and careerism' by top FBI officials as what stopped his investigation."

and:

"Minneapolis, Phoenix, New York. Three different Bureau offices were hot on the terror plot in the days leading up to 9/11 and all were stiffed by Washington. If that is not institutional incompetence, Stalin purge-worthy stuff, heaven help the next 3,000 martyrs to J. Edgar Hoover's über-suits."